Ben Horowitz

Ben Horowitz co-founded Loudcloud and later Opsware, which was acquired by HP for $1.6 billion, before co-founding Andreessen Horowitz with Marc Andreessen in 2009. His book "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" (2014) became one of the most read startup management books, covering layoffs, managing in crises, and making impossible decisions — drawing on his own CEO experience. Horowitz is known at a16z for his focus on enterprise software investing and his approach of hiring experienced executives to support portfolio companies at scale. His second book, "What You Do Is Who You Are" (2019), explored how organizational culture is built through concrete actions rather than stated values, drawing on case studies from historical leaders including Toussaint Louverture and Shaka Zulu as well as modern technology executives to illustrate how great cultures are forged through adversity.